


Fearful Symmetry

by tiger_moran



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Animal Death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some say that animals don’t have souls. Some say that Colonel Moran has no soul either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fearful Symmetry

Others say that animals don’t have souls but Sebastian Moran isn’t sure that’s true. Some have said the same of him too, though maybe they’re right about that one. At any rate he has more respect for these beasts than he does for most of the human beings he’s ever encountered and that has to mean something. He certainly has more respect for this tigress (which is to say, a great deal) than for the arrogant young whelp (which is to say, he wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire) who badly wounded her and then allowed her to escape without even trying to pursue her to finish her off, and though he justifies these hunts by saying he’s killing pests; man-eaters, he cannot bring himself to care about the villagers the tigers have mauled and killed. Why should he care if a few of the locals get spirited away? Not one of them would shed a tear were Colonel Moran to be done in either and that’s the way he likes it, thank you very much. Don’t let anyone close: they’ll only rob you or try to stab you in the back (or both, if they are that whore with the squint he met in Spitalfields that time).

   Moran doesn’t hunt for any old reason. He has no tolerance for those toffs who ride with a pack of hounds, chasing after a runty little fox and tally-ho old boy and all that bollocks, and it’s rare that he’d kill any other smaller creature unless he intended to eat it. He doesn’t hunt the tigers because they’re pests and certainly he has no desire to eat them. He hunts them because he and they are bound together, man and beast. Because he thinks he understands them, and maybe, somehow, they understand him too. Kill or be killed, that’s how it works. Nature is red in tooth and claw and Moran’s hands are stained with blood and just because he respects the animals doesn’t mean he’s not going to shoot them, but it doesn’t mean either that he doesn’t - in his own peculiar way - _care_.

   He lies pressed to the side of the drain, hot and uncomfortable and filthy, and he watches her as she lies dying, and it’s a _moment_ – a moment more intimate than that shared between him and any woman, or man. When her amber eyes dim and the light left in them flickers with her gaze still meeting his, he knows that this is how it had to be; that it could not be any other way; that it was right that they shared this time together, while her great heart pumps out the last of her blood and her laboured breathing becomes slower and shallower. There had been a few seconds when he really, really thought she would best him, when his rifle was no use at such a range and his revolver was lost somewhere in the filth of the drain and all he had was the knife as she lunged for him. “No my darling, not today,” he’d said, as he felt her flesh and skin yield to the blade; as he felt it hit home, right _there_ ; felt the hot gush of blood that resulted, pouring out over him as she knocked him down. “This isn’t my time.”

_‘I’m sorry,’_ he didn’t say, because he knew it was right, this way, but maybe he still was, just a bit.

   There’s a last gasping rattle that fades into utter stillness and now she’s gone, and he feels a momentary twist inside him, somewhere deep down, that he’s almost tempted to call sorrow. He’s trapped beneath her still, too exhausted to try to move yet and pinned beneath her dead weight, but that’s fine; that’s right too, that they lie here together in an embrace of life and death, and he runs a hand across her head, down her muzzle, along the lengths of her whiskers. Instinct makes him pull up one side of her mouth, revealing yellowed teeth, one of them broken and rotted so far down that the nerve is exposed. By god, that must have hurt the poor beast, he thinks, even though those same men who say animals have no souls also tend to claim animals don’t feel pain either. Bullshit. No wonder the poor creature was out of her mind.

   He tries to rub some of the sweat and blood and grime from his face with his sleeve but it’s a pointless gesture with his clothing just as dirty as he is. He’ll have to wait a while, for his strength to return, before he leaves here.

   He wonders now, if animals do have souls, will they be in the afterlife too then? When his time does come (maybe at the end of a rope; he doubts somehow it will be a tiger that does for him in the end), will there be vengeful tigers waiting on the other side to maul him and tear at his immortal soul until the end of eternity? Maybe so, he thinks, and that thought should probably scare him. To Colonel Moran though, this thought seems fitting; comforting, almost.

    That’s how it should be.


End file.
